self conscious
by Ferdinand with Flowers
Summary: Dying Is Your Latest Fashion ///Shiki and Eri centric///


disclaimer  
Back story fic

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self conscious

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She imagines it in her head; you're beautiful; you are really; you believe it girl! And subconsciously, she does believe it and dances with marigolden thoughts of leather entwined narcissism. But then she looks at that stupid mirror they have ready for conceited customers in those snooty department stores. The dancing suddenly stops.

What she really is. She is so ugly and there really is nothing that she can do about it, no matter how hard she tries.

She tries anyways.

Merchandise sells everything: creams that stop ageing, serums that hold wrinkles, masks that hide ugliness.

It is with Eri's help that Shiki tries everything to hide her horrid face, but nothing works.

Nothing ever works, always failing her in the end.

Creams won't stop her age and serums won't hold her wrinkles and masks show how truly ugly she really is.

And she cries on the inside while delicious delectable Eri smiles and tries to flatter her. That Shiki seems so beautiful in the dull lights of that awful department store.

Shiki wants so bad to tell her that that's not true; that the dull lights in turn radiate Eri's peach skin and make her seem like an Angel in beautiful velvet and that she has natural beauty and that Shiki hates her for it and that she wants to call her a bitch and that she hopes that she gets hit by a car and she dies and burns and gets molested and…

She just smiles painfully as Eri scouts out a colorful blouse that matches _so_ well with her brown eyes. She holds it up, and of course it fits her right.

Of course of course of course of course of course it would fit her just right. And Shiki finds that she hates her best friend even more than yesterday.

Hatehatehatehatehate. Yet she is still hanging out with the stupid girl. She still can't fathom why.

Shiki is silently grinding her teeth as Eri shoves that colorful blouse into her arms.

"It matches your hair," Eri is smiling, and Shiki knows that she is just trying to be nice. To atone for what she said yesterday.

But recalling yesterday just made her feel _so_ bad…

"Are you mocking me?" She whispers through the metal wires of her braces. Rubber band pink is _so_ in these days.

Eri's face falls. She opens her mouth to say something.

"What was that," She feels it is the wrong thing to say as the words flow from her lips. She knows that acting senile will just enrage the flustered Shiki.

"Are you trying to mock me?" She whispers it. And to make sure that Eri was properly listening, she shouts it.

Shiki is crying now.

"You're right, you now," She is balling as she recalls yesterday, holding that skirt like a colorful security blanket.

Of course of course of course of course of course Shiki is right. Shiki is always right.

"I'm not meant to be a designer," She shoves the skirt roughly against the chest of a shocked Eri. Gracefully pivoting on the balls of her feet (anything graceful is _so _in), she runs in the opposite direction.

She runs through throngs of pretty people, bustling through with ceaseless chatter and anticipation of the latest threads.

They ignore her, but laugh at her ugliness. She ignores them, but envies their beauty.

She gets lost among perfect mannequins and racks of clothes that she will never be pretty enough to wear, when she finds one of the gates that leads out of this infernal hell.

She runs through the gate, not stopping for the pretty group stationed diligently there for the rest of their gang, not stopping when the sun was roasting her skin in an ugly tan, not stopping to catch her breath, not stopping when the stoplights turned green.

Shiki Misaki stopped running from her best friend only when a car, prettier than her, had ignored her and her ugliness. The driver had noticed the girl running across the street, and tried in vain to step on the brakes.

She would have survived in a vegetative state, had she not been flung in the general direction of that unfashionable streetlamp…

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**When she woke up, she was Eri. She looked like Eri, breathed Eri, moved with Eri's hands and feet.  
****She smiled Eri's smile as she said her own name, original name.  
****It was (not) a dream come true.**

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concrit greatly appreciated


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